Amazon’s S3 storage solution crashed earlier today, causing widespread issues with a range of web 2.0 applications. The service is popular among startups due to its cheap pricing and usual reliability.

Allen Stern broke the news on Centernetworks, noting that the service went down at around midday US EDT. His latest update indicates (per the screenshot above) that some 6 hours later the service was slowly coming back up. Affected services include the iPhone Twitter client Twinkle and photo hosting service SmugMug. Other services affected include the AIR Twitter client Twhirl, which relies on S3 for avatar hosting.

WebWorker Daily notes that Amazon offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee on S3, which equates to no more than 45 minutes of downtime a month, with refunds available for longer downtime.

For those affected by the downtime, the Amazon status page can be followed here.

Update: outage seems to have take Plurk completely offline as well.

Amazon S3 outage causes widespread issues is a post from: The Inquisitr

Smugmug

Smugmug is a leader in the Flickr alternatives space. Great looks are combined with good traffic and a strong community to deliver a viable and attractive alternative. The one catch though: Smugmug is a paid service with only a free trial period, a speedhump for the majority of Flickr users on a free account, but premium Flickr users with pro accounts won’t mind paying $39.95/ yr for unlimited uploads and storage. Smugmug also offers video hosting for $59.95/ yr, although with a huge range of free options in the video space I don’t immediately see the appeal.

Zooomr

Zooomr was once the Flickr in waiting, but after uptime issues last year the site now calls itself a “social utility” that offers a Twitter style short message service. Founder Kristopher Tate has also been focusing on the Japanese market. Worth consideration as the traffic is reasonable and the user base fairly active.

Photobucket

Before you ask, the answer is yes, Photobucket. The MySpace (FIM) owned Photobucket has matured past its roots as a photo uploading site for social network profiles and is now a fully fledged photo sharing site with its own community. The selling point: stable, strong ownership means that you’ll never lose your photos. The downside: it’s still as ugly as sin. Great for 12 year olds with ADHD, bad for anyone older than 25 with 20/20 vision.

Picasa Web Albums

Google has long lagged in photo sharing, but more and more lately images hosted on Picasa Web Albums keep popping up. Focused on Google’s excellent Picasa photo editing tool, Google offers functional and easy to use photo hosting that will never go down. For Mac users there is a Picasa photo uploader which looks nearly identical to the Flickr equivalent, so the switch isn’t that big. My guess is that Picasa Web Albums is the next big service in photo sharing, although it won’t appeal to serious photographers. Also like most things Google, it’s not exactly pretty either.

Dot Mac/ Mobile Me

Apple’s Dot Mac (soon to be Mobile Me) service isn’t cheap, but the built in support for photo galleries within iPhoto creates seriously good looking photo galleries. The downside is a complete lack of social sharing or social anything really, it’s great looking photos and nothing else. I personally use this service for private galleries, or to be more precise photos my 5 year old son has taken that I want to share only with family and close friends.

23

23 is the smallest service we’ve put on this list, but it stands out as being a simple, well designed, attractive photo sharing site with a active community. The risk with smaller services is that they might not go the distance, however everything feels right about this site.

I’m not about to cancel my Flickr membership, but already I know I’m not alone in considering other services, so I hope the list helps. If there are any services not included that you’d recommend, leave a comment below, and also let us know why you use them.

6 Alternatives To Flickr Now Yahoo Is In Full Control is a post from: The Inquisitr